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Updated: May 31, 2025
Nott sent a detachment to occupy the fortress of Khelat-i-Ghilzai, between Candahar and Ghuznee, thus rendering the communications more secure; and later, Macnaghten bribed the chiefs by an annual subsidy of L600 to abstain from infesting the highways. The terms were cheap, for the Ghilzai tribes mustered some 40,000 fighting men.
Macnaghten refused peremptorily the proffer of Ameenoolla's head, but did not reject co-operation in that chiefs capture by a dubious device in which British troops were to participate; he did not hesitate to accept the general terms of the proposals; and he consented to hold a conference with Akbar Khan on the following day to carry into effect the projected measures.
Dost Mahomed had maintained his sway by politic management of the chiefs, and through them of the tribes. Macnaghten would have done well to impress on Shah Soojah the wisdom of pursuing the same tactics.
My father was engaged for about three years as clerk of the works for the erection of a castle for Sir Francis Macnaghten, near Bushmills, County Antrim. This must be one of the least Catholic parts of Ireland, for there was no resident priest, and I had to be taken a long distance to be christened.
Disaffection was rife everywhere throughout the kingdom, but it was perhaps most rife in the Kohistan, which was seething with intrigues in favour of Dost Mahomed, while the local chiefs were intensely exasperated by the exactions of the Shah's revenue collectors. Macnaghten summoned the chiefs to Cabul.
Macnaghten seems to have originally intended to accompany this force, for he wrote that he 'hoped to settle the hash of the Ghilzais on the way down, if not before. The rising, however, spread so widely and so rapidly that immediate action was judged necessary, and on October 9th Colonel Monteath marched towards the passes with his own regiment, the 35th Native Infantry, some artillery and cavalry details, and a detachment of Broadfoot's sappers.
The deceptive quietude of Afghanistan which followed the sharp lessons administered to the Dooranees and the Ghilzais was not seriously disturbed during the month of September 1841, and Macnaghten was in a full glow of cheerfulness.
The fatal policy of English interference with the fiery tribes of Northern India in support of an unpopular ruler had ended in the murder of Sir Alexander Burns and Sir William Macnaghten, and the evacuation of Cabul by the English. This was not all.
His advice to his chief was to have nothing to say to Macnaghten, to me, or to the sappers, saying Monteath had men enough, and needed neither sappers nor tools. At parting the poor old man said to Broadfoot: 'If you go out, for God's sake clear the passes quickly, that I may get away; for if anything were to turn up, I am unfit for it, done up in body and mind. This was the man whom Lord Auckland had appointed to the most responsible and arduous command at his disposal, and this not in ignorance of General Elphinstone's disqualifications for active service, but in the fullest knowledge of them!
Macnaghten scouted Rawlinson's warning, and instructed him that 'it will make the consideration of all questions more simple if you will hereafter take for granted that as regards us "the king can do no wrong." However, he and the Shah did remove from Candahar the Vakeel and his clique of obnoxious persons, who had been grinding the faces of the people; and the Envoy allowed himself to hope that this measure would restore order to the province of Candahar.
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